


A Turkey Named Brotherhood

by disco_vendetta (brinn)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:28:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinn/pseuds/disco_vendetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You didn't take out the giblets, did you?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Turkey Named Brotherhood

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://torigates.livejournal.com/327278.html?thread=7769966#t7769966) for [torigates](http://torigates.livejournal.com/)'s [All Hands On Deck Ficathon ](http://torigates.livejournal.com/327278.html#comments)

Thanksgiving at the West home is not a holiday, so much as an exercise in producing as much food as possible, as quickly as possible, for the three days beforehand.  
  
Which is why he makes a last-minute stop at the cave to find his stretchy pants. For reasons. "Reasons" is also why he assumes there is a rather alarming amount of smoke coming from the general direction of the kitchen, M'gann's high-pitched " _Oh! Oh oh oh ohhhh!"_ "s filtering back through the hallway.  
  
"Is….this the 'roasting' technique you mentioned?" Kaldur's standard I Am Your Stoic Leader, Trust My Judgement voice ventures, just as Wally sticks his head into the kitchen and gets a lungful of the blackened, charred hunk of flesh he suspects began this life as a turkey.  
  
"You didn't take out the giblets, did you?" Wally has lived through enough holidays and watched enough TLC specials to know how these things generally go. M'gann just makes an incoherent sort of wailing noise and waves a flower-print oven mitt through the smoke pathetically.  
  
"It was all just - "  
  
"Too much at once," Conner finishes, cranberry sauce dripping off the bridge of his nose. He seriously doesn't wanna know how the rest of it wound up on his head. Or those marshmallows. Or the lone, glistening yam.  
  
  
+  
  
  
She's sitting in a diner, _Nighthawks_ -style, with a stack of notebooks on the other side of the booth where a partner should go, frowning in concentration at a fat textbook cracked open in front of her. Pushed off to the side, apparently forgotten, lies the nibbled-on carcass of what he just _knows_ is a turkey sandwich, because that's the sort of pathetic these idiots are given to without his constant supervision.  
  
“So you should come to Thanksgiving at my place,” he offers in place of pleasantries, sliding in across from her and nudging a math workbook out of his way, careful not to lose her page.  
  
She barely blinks when he materializes, all button-down shirt and puppy eyes.  
  
“The whole team’s coming with,” he adds.  
  
"We don't really do Thanksgiving in my family."  
  
"C'mon," he cajoles in his very whiniest voice, hoping to break her down with sheer irritation, "You clearly don't have anywhere else to be. And my mom's food is so superior to… _that_ ," he wrinkles up his nose in distaste at her turkey melt, "that I won't sully its good name by the comparison." Artemis just crosses her arms over her chest and looks so thoroughly unimpressed it makes him wonder if he's losing his touch.

"And it would mean a lot to M'gann," he adds, switching gears. "And to…everyone. It's her and Kaldur and Conner's first Thanksgiving, and even though they don't care, _she_ does and she wants to spend it with people she knows." She picks at the edge of her book with a gray-painted nail and doesn't look at him. Sensing her resolve is weakening, he goes in for the kill.  
  
"Besides, my mom always says that Thanksgiving is for family and the less fortunate."  
  
"Did you just call me a less fortunate?" she hisses at him, brandishing her fork at him in her stabbin' hand.  
  
"No," he says honestly, surprised.  
  
She just _looks_ at him for what feels like a solid minute but what is probably closer to two seconds, and he opens his mouth to say…something that will make her not look at him like that ever again, when there's a faint _thump_ from the window next to them and they both look up at the same moment, Artemis reaching for the collapsible crossbow he knows she's got stashed in her backpack (Wally finds himself clutching her spoon with zero ideas of how he intends to use it to incapacitate attackers). M'gann, Conner, and Kaldur are pressed up against the glass looking plaintive - well, M'gann looks plaintive. Conner looks like he's been coerced and Kaldur just looks like he doesn't know how this became his life.  
  
M'gann presses a pale green hand to the window, the glass fogging up around her fingers. The faintest of smiles tugs at the right corner of Artemis’s mouth (not that he's looking at her mouth) (it's for _science_ , he mutters to the imaginary Robin smirking at him). She shoots Wally a _you'll pay for this later, West_ look before briefly touching her fingertips to the outline of M'gann's and nodding.  
  
M'gann's squeal is clearly audible from inside the restaurant.  
  
  
+  
  
  
Robin meets them outside a very tall building in downtown Gotham in what even Wally can tell is an exquisitely tailored suit, his wrist just brushing back his hair, finishing the smooth movement of putting his dark glasses into place.  
  
"You sure you don't mind cutting out of…that?"  
  
"Lots of people talking about nothing, who keep asking me what a 'ward' is. Don't worry about it," he adds as they make a collective ' _the fuck?_ ' face at him from their seats in the Bioship, camouflaged to look like a minivan. Robin makes a face and politely asks Miss M if she can ask it to switch to a Rolls.  
  
At their collective look of disbelief, he straightens his tie and looks pitying.  
  
“Have some taste, we’re not _farmers._ ” He pets the side of the Bioship appreciatively as she ripples in response.  
  
  
+

 

His mother, to her neverending credit and because he loves her best, doesn't even bat an eyelash when he shows up to Thanksgiving dinner with five extra people and an apologetic expression.  
  
"There were circumstances," he offers as means of explanation.  
  
"M'gann set the turkey on fire," Conner adds, deadpan. M'gann glows bright red and ducks behind his shoulder. Artemis elbows him covertly. Kaldur just looks despairing.  
  
His mom's whole face lights up when she spots Conner, no doubt remembering the angry, glare-y, solar-suited pod-baby who crashed in her son's closet that one time and didn't understand what the purpose of a Fruit Loop was.  
  
"Superboy, honey, how are you, dear?"  
  
"It's Conner, now," he says, shifting his weight around and looking uncomfortable. His mom just _beams_ at him, like Christmas came early, like it's the best news she's ever heard, and Conner does one of his tentative half-smiles that's the Conner equivalent of bounding across the room and engulfing her in a bear hug, and for a moment he's just so fond of them both that he's a little disgusted with himself.  
  
At the other end of the kitchenette, Uncle Barry and Jay are waving enthusiastically from a virtual mountain of food his mom's been assembling all day. Dad and Aunt Iris are setting up card tables for the overflow. Wally counts six different kinds of pies just on cursory perusal, and -  
  
" _Stay away from the pecan, Barry!_ " he shouts, pointing an accusatory finger at the fork that's making a surreptitious play for his pie of choice.  
  
"Well, I guess we finally know who buys those three gallon tubs of mayonnaise at Sam's Club," Artemis muses, watching three generations of Wests prep themselves to eat enough to kill most large land mammals.  
  
"Honey, you have no idea," his mom drawls, wiping flour off on her Merlotte's apron (his mom has terrible taste in tv, but he must forgive because she clothes and feeds - and feeds and feeds - him). "Wallace, don't be rude, introduce us to your friends."  
  
He tears his eyes away from where Jay is inching the key lime closer to his plate on the sly, and blushes for no apparent reason. It's just - he knows his mom worries that he doesn't have any friends at school, and that he only hangs out with 'coworkers,' as she calls them, and - and - and these are his _people_ , and he wants her to like them.  
  
"Right. Right, um - this is Artemis. Artemis likes kicking people and shooting things." There's a beat and the entirety of the Junior Justice League gives a _what the actual fuck, Wally?!_ look, and his voice splutters back to life. "Um! And Robin, you've actually met once, but you probably don't remember. This is M'gann - or, er, Megan, if you…like? She’s from Mars, thus the green, Conner you know, annnnnnd this is Kaldur! He's from Atlantis, and he's our boss - well, I mean, _Batman_ 's our boss, but Kaldur's in charge. We voted. It was a good call. Everyone, thisismymomlet'seatokayyes."  
  
He bolts for the table and hides behind the three truly massive turkeys taking up most of the counter space and prays for death. Uncle Barry hums "Smooth Operator" under his breath and Wally throws a roll at his head.  
  
  
+

 

When they're all assembled around the table (two kitchen stools, Wally's computer chair, and an ottoman all had to be requisitioned for the cause), Artemis and Conner on either side of him, his mom smacks Jay's hand with a wooden spoon as she calls for silence. The team responds immediately. They can recognize a site-specific Batman when they see one.  
  
"Now we have a tradition in this house that before Thanksgiving dinner, we all go around the table and say what we're thankful for this year. Participation is mandatory, Conner, so don't make that face. I'll start - this year I'm thankful for heroes who keep us safe." She beams at them all collectively around the table and Wally would be lying if he said he didn't swell with a certain sort of pride, he's not made of _stone_ , okay?  
  
Uncle Barry, Dad, and Jay are thankful for boring, old people things, and Aunt Iris is thankful for thorough tax analysts for reasons he doesn't even wanna know.  
  
Robin grins and says he's thankful for having so many opportunities to feel the aster. Kaldur looks extremely solemn and intones that he's thankful for being seen as worthy of great responsibility. M'gann practically sparkles with joy and says she's thankful for the generosity of humans and the welcome she's received on this planet.  
  
Conner opens his mouth, closes it, and looks at him mom. "I'm thankful for my friends. And," he adds, apparently an afterthought, "that they disobeyed direct orders and helped me break out of the Cadmus facility. And for Wolf. And the Sphere." They wait for a moment to see if he's forgotten anything, but he just looks at Artemis expectantly.  
  
"I'm thankful for, um," she glances at him for a second before ducking her head in a very un-Artemis way and his stomach does the most _bizarre_ flip-flop thing that doesn't have anything to do with the mountains of food waiting for him. "For my family. All of them."  
  
"What she said," Wally finishes, nudging her foot super-briefly under the table, and then there is a blur of Flashes seizing food and serving everyone so it's like the food just _appears_ on their plates and then there is the general mayhem of mass amounts of people stuffing collective face.  
  
This is all before his dad insists on leading them all on a rousing round of the "Happy, Happy Turkey Day" song from The Addams Family Values, effectively killing any street cred Wally will ever accumulate in his life.  
  
He tries to hide his face in hands, but he still see his mom catch his eye between his fingers and make significant eyebrow movement in Artemis's general direction and he sneaks her a thumbs up, using Conner as a shield. She gives him an approving A-OK under the guise of passing the green bean casserole and yes, yes, yes, he is thankful.


End file.
